A small plane crashed in the yard of a home on New York's Long Island on Tuesday morning, killing the pilot and scattering shards of glass across a room where a baby was sleeping in a crib, authorities said.

The plane crashed into a side yard in East Patchogue, a hamlet on Long Island's south shore about 50 miles (80 km) east of New York City, setting the house on fire.

The baby's mother was in another part of the house at the time and rushed to the nursery to find broken glass strewn around the crib, said Kevin Molloy, a spokesman for the town of Brookhaven.

The mother and baby escaped unharmed and the blaze was soon extinguished, but fire marshals found a body in the plane's wreckage, Molloy said.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that only the pilot was on board the plane, a single-engine Lancair LC-41 aircraft, which was flying between two small Long Island airports about 10 miles (16 km) apart.

Suffolk County police identified the pilot as Hanan Shoshany, 53, of New York City, and said detectives were investigating the crash with the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board.